Chapter 3;

Kitsune’s Mask

Miran could feel something pounding against her chest. It was a numbing sort of pain that spread across her entire upper body area. She coughed up mouthfuls of water, and her lungs expanded to fill with air. Her head was pounding, and so was her heart. But, at least that meant she was alive.

Whatever noise came out of ended up as a groan, and as her senses started coming back Miran felt the soreness in her muscles, the ache in her chest, and the pain in her left ear. Her body felt freezing cold and wet, and something felt like it was dripping onto her cheek.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, though she immediately closed them because the brightness of the sun was too much for her to handle.

Miran heard a gasp, and it sounded like it was nearby.

She tried opening her eyes again, and through fluttering lids she saw something much brighter than sunshine. It was a person, and he was hovering just above her body.

His hair was like fresh snow, except what fell from the tips wasn’t frozen dust. Water droplets barely clung onto the clumped ends of his hair like they didn’t want to part with him. But it was his eyes that seemed to put her in a trance. Rich gold with fiery sparks of orange, and pupils like almonds.

He wasn’t human for sure, but the first thought that passed by Miran’s head wasn’t demon, or any of the titles she had grown up learning.

Beautiful.

He truly was. Behind him, two large white objects fluttered in the wind. One was on the left, the other on the right, and they seemed to mimic wings. He was like an angel or deity of some sort with all the white he was dressed in.

The young man’s expression went from worried to shocked, and his face suddenly disappeared out of sight. Miran slowly rose with one hand covering her head. The pain was throbbing everywhere, but her head ached the most. She squinted her eyes in front of her, and the man was sitting on the ground a few feet away from her.

He had covered his face with a mask of some sort. It was white, just like his hair. A long snout protruded from the mask, and delicate lines of red decorated the entire thing. The mask’s eyes were black, with a tiny hole in each circle’s centre. Still, the holes weren’t large enough for any gold to peak out.

It took her a couple of seconds to realize that the mask he wore was of a fox, and that the two “wings” that fluttered behind him were actually tails. They were long, puffy tails the same colour as his hair, with ringlets of red at the tips.

“Y-you’re awake,” he spoke. His voice was pleasant, and had a unique ring to it. It sounded almost melodic to her, even though he wasn’t singing.

“Where am I?” she managed to ask. Miran coughed into her arm, and whatever remaining water in her lungs was now gone.

The man crawled towards her, and cocked his head to the side. From her position, he bore a strong resemblance to a fox – the mask, paired with his tails and his white clothes reminded her of an arctic fox. He didn’t dare get too close to her, but he was close enough that he could study her entire physique.

“You’re… human?” he asked. His voice was filled with curiosity, and a sort of tenderness that Miran didn’t know why he was exhibiting.

Miran blinked twice at the stranger, then let out a scream. She instantly started backing up, but when she felt her hand dip into cold water, she let out another yelp and shifted away from the river. With her back against a tree trunk, Miran looked around her frantically for any sort of object that could act as a weapon.

She eventually found a sharp stick and pointed it in his direction. “Stay away, fox demon!” she barked at him.

“I saved you!” he exclaimed. The fox demon sat on his behind – or was he sitting on his tails? – and crossed his arms. “I think I at least deserve an answer.”

“What are you going on about?!” she shouted.

“Are you human?” he asked her in an equally loud shout.

She stayed quiet, then dropped the stick onto the ground. Miran searched through her robes for the talismans she always carried with her, and pulled out a few sheets with triumph. However, the thin papers were soaked, and the ink on them blurred out from having been in water. A couple of them had ripped in half, and Miran knew they were useless but she still flung them at the kitsune.

The wet papers fell short, and didn’t even reach his toes. The fox demon picked one of them up, and waved it around in the air. He stuck it to his hand, then to his head.

“What are these?” he asked her.

“!” she cursed. Priests weren’t allowed to curse, but she was sure the heavens would forgive her for using them in her current situation. “No, no, no, no, no!”

She was in unknown territory, weaponless, and face-to-face with a fox demon. Miran clawed at the dirt near her sides, and looked all around her. The sky wasn’t blue; it was cloudy and she could just barely make out a faint glowing ball that she was sure was the sun. Crows continued to caw in the air, except they were much larger than the birds she had seen earlier. They also had arms and feet.

Miran looked to her side and saw figures she had only seen in drawings from her textbooks. Tiny, one-eyed creatures in various colours. Trees with eyes and fangs. Amidst them all, a kitsune clad in white and red.

Miran struggled to claw her way to the edge of the river. When she finally reached the river’s bank, she poked her head over to meet crystal blue water. How had she ended up in the spirit world? She remembered a water demon pulling her into the river, and then a speckle of white before she passed out.

If she dove into the river again, would she end up in the human world? Miran was tempted to dive into the water, but something held her back. It was a creeping feeling in her heart that quickly overwhelmed her entire conscious, and it kept her frozen in place.

Fear.

Miran was afraid of going back into the water now. Would she encounter another water demon? Could she even hold her breath for that long? How was it possible that she traversed through worlds and ended up in a separate realm?

As Miran stared at her reflection in the water, it dawned on her. Reflective surfaces acted as the portal between the two worlds, and by looking into the water she had fallen victim to a yokai. Miran cursed herself for her lack of discipline. Nari had been right – the river wasn’t the place to gaze upon one’s reflection. She had made a mistake, and now she would have to pay for it. She felt lucky that she was still alive after such a blunder.

Miran whirled her head around to look at the fox demon. She remembered it now – remembered him. He was the spot of white she had seen right before she passed out. He had saved her; it finally settled in.

“You… saved me?” she asked in a quiet voice.

He nodded his head and inched himself closer to her. Miran remained cautious of him, and instinctively brought her arms up into a defensive position. “Why?” she asked, slowly.

“I wanted to catch some fish, so I dove into the water,” he replied earnestly.

“No, not that. Why did you save me?” she asked.

“Oh,” he started. He sat on his behind – she was sure he was sitting on his tails though – and scratched the back of his head. “Because you’re a human, aren’t you?”

Miran didn’t respond. Never trust a fox demon, she reminded herself.

“You are human, right?”

“What does it matter to you?” she huffed. “Are you going to eat me too?”

“No, no, no!” he blurted out. The kitsune waved his arms in front of him in protest, and continued to inch his way closer to her. “I don’t eat humans – at least I don’t think I do. I wouldn’t be able to, anyway.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “So you saved me because I’m human, but you don’t want to… eat me?”

“That’s right! I-“

Miran scoffed and forced herself to stand up. She looked behind her, and scorned at the sight of the river. She couldn’t risk drowning, or falling victim to another water demon. She would have to find another way to return to the human world. But first, she needed to find some wood and start a fire. Her stomach growled, and she had studied enough plants to know which ones were edible.

She stumbled a bit, and felt dizzy but forced herself to take a step forward. She held onto nearby trees and slowly made her way deeper into the forest.

“Wait!” The fox demon caught up to her, and she could hear his breath hit the mask over his face. He continued, “It’s dangerous for a human to venture into the forest by themselves!”

It was still rather difficult for her to speak, and Miran clutched a hand over her chest. “Whatever happens to me shouldn’t be of any concern to you.”

She was shivering from her soaked clothes, and her lips were starting to be void of colour. She sneezed twice into her arm, but kept trudging forward. She needed to find some firewood, and fast.

“You shouldn’t push yourself. Human bodies are weak,” the kitsune told her.

And even though she wanted to yell at him and say that she wasn’t weak, she felt her vision darken. Spots of black danced in her view of sight, and soon everything was rising upwards.

Or maybe she was falling. Miran couldn’t tell, because an ever so familiar darkness embraced her before she could figure it out.

.::.        .::.        .::.

When Miran awoke, she felt a thin blanket of sort over her body. She felt warm, and dry. She heard the flickering of a fire nearby, and turned her body around on the ground to face the source of heat. The flames danced atop a bundle of wood, except the fire wasn’t like any typical one.

It was gold. It didn’t contain orange, or red, or the faint hints of blue from when it got too hot. It was a uniform shade of pure gold, and it instantly reminded her of the fox demon’s golden eyes. She shot up, and the white blanket that had been covering her fell off. She stared down at the fabric, and saw that it was a coat and not a blanket.

It was his coat, she realized.

It was significantly darker now, and she looked around her for signs of the fox demon. Where had he gone? Why did he leave her with his coat? Was he the one who started the fire, and was it for her? Was she even truly alone?

“Good, you’re awake.”

Miran recognized the voice. She looked around her, but couldn’t spot the kitsune. Eventually, she tilted her head upwards and met his familiar figure. He was sitting on a thick tree branch, with his back against the trunk. One leg was propped up on the branch, while the other dangled freely in the air. His torso was covered by a red shirt, while his pants were white and resembled clouds.

He tilted his head downwards slightly, and Miran wondered if he was looking at her or not. It was difficult to tell when he wore a mask over his face.

He hopped down from the tree and landed on his feet. He waltzed towards something near the foot of the tree, and picked up a clothed bundle. He walked towards her and sat down, cross-legged, then shoved the bundle in her direction.

“Eat,” he instructed her.

When she made no sign of movement, he set the wrapped bundle in front of her. “I hope humans eat carrots.”

Miran slowly unravelled the cloth, and just like he had said, a handful of carrots lay in the centre of the fabric. Her stomach growled at the sight of the familiar food, and without a second thought she grabbed one of the carrots and started munching on it.

“So, humans do eat carrots,” he muttered under his breath.

“The fire, and these,” she started.

“I got them,” he replied before she could finish her question. “And I started the fire too.”

“Oh,” she mumbled, and slowly continued eating her carrot. “Thanks –“

“Baekhyun,” he told her.

“Pardon?”

“Baekhyun. It’s my name,” he repeated himself.

“Oh, well, thank you… Baekhyun,” she said quietly, unsure of her own words.

“What’s your name?”

Miran racked through her brain to recall the various types of demons she had learned about. Some yokai required a name in order to possess an individual, but fox demons didn’t do such things. Still, she couldn’t trust him with her own name.

Was ‘Baekhyun’ even his name?

“Yeonhwa,” she told him after much contemplation.

“Oh, okay,” Baekhyun replied. He then lifted one of her battered talismans and flung it in the air. “Is that how you pronounce it? I thought it was read as ‘Tae Miran’. Then again, some of the ink is blurry.”

Miran flushed with embarrassment, and she looked away from both Baekhyun and the shriveled-up talisman. She focused her attention on the flickering golden flames, and was trying to devise a few plans on how to escape from the spirit realm. If she was to survive in their world, she would need to find food, and weapons.

Her lids felt heavy, and she let out a quiet yawn. She had been asleep longer than she had been awake today, but her body was so fatigued she could feel it in her bones. Miran decided she would start looking for food, and materials to make weapons out of tomorrow.

Preferably, she would like to find enough materials to craft a bow and some arrows, and perhaps find dark berries to grind into a pigment. Paper would be hard to come by, but she supposed she could turn stones into talismans as well. Stones wouldn’t rip and bleed because of water, anyway.

“Tae Miran,” Baekhyun repeated to himself. He stared down at her name, which had once been painted neatly on the bottom of the rectangular sheet of paper. And although she couldn’t see it, his lips had curled into a wicked grin of sorts.

He could use Tae Miran, he thought.

A/N: I'm so sorry I've been away for so long! School's been a pain (ok but when do I not complain about school). BUT BESIDES THAT, LOOK AT THE NEW POSTER I GOT IT'S ABSOLUTELY SO BEAUTIFUL IT HAS ME sHoOkEtH EVERY TIME I LOOK AT IT. Thank you so so muh, AliceReverie <3

Also, enter kitsune Baekhyun! What do you think that last line means? ;)

\\ xoxo